Ok, let’s say you left home this morning for an important meeting and, when you got there, you discovered that you have left the presentation file and the whole USB stick plugged on the PC back home. What do you do?

Most people would prefer a typical solution for remote access, like the Remote Desktop service on Windows or a VNC server on Linux. Usually, these server applications are configured to start on system boot and stay up, regardless if you need them or not. In the worst case, you may even forget all about them after some time, creating yet another security vulnerability for your system. Ideally, we would prefer the option of turning these servers on and off on demand, but the problem is that you’re not in front of your desktop PC to do so.

We have not yet found a way to “wake up” a server that it is not even running, so that you can connect to it and start it. Nevertheless, a combination of tools and web services can enable just that. I was wondering if it is possible to signal my home computer to start a server on demand, via a telephone (modem) or something, but I ended up in a much different and much more efficient way.

It seems that web 2.0 is becoming much more than a social thing. It can also be used a public “bulletin board”, accessed through various means and devices, making it a perfect “triggering” platform for web-enabled applications. Likewise, VNC is now becoming a standard practice for home and small-scale remote accessing, something like a mini-cloud architecture, for individual users for their own private needs. A combination of all these technologies can build up into a seamless service that can be characterized as a true “remote office via web 2.0” – definitely science fiction for those who have witnessed the birth of World Wide Web, only two decades ago.

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